His character is the voluminously haired metalhead who runs the Hellfire Club, Hawkins high’s Dungeons & Dragons society – with sidelines in drug-dealing and a band called Corroded Coffin. He soon finds himself at the centre of the sci-fi saga’s latest adventure. Prime suspect for a gruesome murder and accused of satanic worship, Munson becomes the Indiana town’s most wanted man. I tried grappling with Dungeons & Dragons, but accepted that wasn’t going to happen

Eddie Munson Master of Puppets - T-Shirt Stranger Things

Quinn, far right, with Rory Kinnear and Helen Mirren in Catherine the Great. Photograph: TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy With you, Charlie Heaton, Millie Bobby Brown and Jamie Campbell Bower , there’s a sizeable British contingent in Stranger Things … It’s a testament to the heritage of British acting and the grounding we get over here. It’s an invaluable thing. I owe a lot to my training, what little I have. Not before landing the role, but it’s testament to the Duffer brothers how they reference it in this sensitive, finely executed way. They don’t crowbar in the nostalgia or real-life nods, they just let them live in this world they’ve created. That makes it feel authentic – well, as authentic as a show with a tentacled lizard-man can be. It was painfully stereotypical. I was an only child of separated parents, which breeds a pathological need for attention. I was never a stage kid being taken to auditions from an early age, but I’d always been curious. At primary school, I became a bit of a showoff. I got a drama scholarship to Emanuel school at Clapham Junction and it was the only thing I had any natural aptitude for. The fact that it’s my bread and butter now is mental.No meetings, no chemistry reads, no protracted process. It was pretty unusual and very disarming. It meant I was waiting for [creators] the Duffer brothers to realise they’d made a mistake. The thing is, they’ve got my family tied up somewhere and if I spoil anything, I’ll never see them again. No, I can say there’s a guitar scene and that the scale and ambition are astonishing. All the seeds that have been planted bear fruit and it’s just carnage. You know the finale is two-and-a-half hours, right? Ending with this monster, feature-length episode is so bold.

Eddie Manson - Etsy Eddie Manson - Etsy

You get past a certain number and it’s kind of boggling. I’m thrilled that people are watching it because I can’t tell you how hard everyone worked. Other way around. No, it’s hard to take yourself seriously in a three-ton wig. Anthony Hopkins, who’s a hero of mine, was once asked why he wanted to act for a living. He replied: “Beats work.” This is a fascinating job and, without wishing to sound like a Hallmark card, that’s kind of what I want out of life: an adventure. What did you learn from older cast members such as Winona Ryder and David Harbour , who play Joyce Byers and Jim Hopper ? It’s directed by this extraordinary young woman called Luna Carmoon, who grew up in south-east London obsessed with film. It’s an independent British film made on a half-a-Mars-bar budget but Luna has written something feral and different. I’m excited for people to see it because there’s definitely something about her. That was so weird,” says Quinn with a laugh. “I auditioned by doing a self-tape of that speech, but it was one of the last scenes I ended up shooting. So I waited from November 2019 to June 2021.”So Stranger Things represents a departure, but the show has been lit up by Munson’s arrival. Quinn himself, though, couldn’t be more self-effacing. The show has overtaken Bridgerton to become the most-watched English-language series in Netflix history. Are such figures hard to get your head around?